I am quite disgusted for I have spent 135+ minutes on the phone with 18004MYXBOX trying to get the Xbox 360 wireless controller to work with my Windows XP SP2 computer. They, after 2 calls finally figured out that their software that exists currently doesn't work with the wireless controllers and a play and charge kit. I was curious if there is anyone in the community who has been working on developing a driver to support the play and charge kit with the wireless controllers?

While tech support said it is not currently support, eventually MS will release drivers to make this possible. I can't imagine i'd be to much of a deviation from the wired controller's drivers that have been developed. The tech support also suggested that it could be quite sometime before such drivers are released by MS.

My question is then... is anyone developing a driver to be used with a Windows XP SP2 machine that will allow the play and charge kit to work for PC gaming?

((posted similiar topic on the xbox forums, not that i actually expected a reasonable response there))

When the play and charge kit is plugged in, the controller is still a wireless controller. The kit is just to charge the batteries that are in the controller pack, nothing more. It wont be as easy as just making some drivers for the controller because you will still need something on the pc that will transmit data back and forth with the controller. You prob wont ever see the wireless controllers working with the pc.

Kinda suprised that MS couldnt have told you that....

Its funny cuz the guy on the phone said that while they could release drivers to do it, he didn't expect it to be soon... This to me suggested that it was in consideration.

Could you source me to some information about what you've said with the Play n Charge only works for 2.4Ghz gameplay and no direct connections?

but ummmm even if you some how did get it to work with the play and charge kit (impossible) it whould then be a "wired" controller . why not just use a wired controller in the first place?

im 99% sure someone has already done this before. i saw it a while ago. all he did was change something in the driver. i think it was like he just hexed something from a 0 to a 1. if the search was up i would find it for you but its down rite now.

you know all kind of people have been making claims that the play and charge kit only transmits power.

whether or not the PaC wire can transmit controller data is unknown but one thing is that it does actually transfer data and register as a USB device.

IF MS was only going to use it for power the could have easily only had 2 wires going through the cable, instead there are both data and power wires. Also when plugged into a PC it recognizes it as a device, your PC wouldn't do that if it didn't have the necessary circuitry sending it data.

so it does more then just send power, what else it does, I don't know.

And yes there was someone working on getting the official drivers to work for the wireless controller but he couldn't get it to recognize any actual inputs from the controller (but he did get it to recognize that there was a controller plugged in.)

i don't think MS will make drivers for the wireless control. while it seems it's possible from what I've read in this thread I just don't see it happening. And someone else asked why not just use a wired control for the PC, and the only reason I can think to answer that is to save $30 ;p

It should have been supported through the play & charge kit, but oh well.... I'm conten with 3 wireless and 1 wired controller. you rarely like the guy/girl that actually plays as the 4th player when they're at your place anyways

I'd imagine what it does is report to the 360 that a P&C is plugged in and charging, so that the 360 can go into charge-suspend mode when turned off, rather than fully turn off, couldnt do that if it had no data wires.

THE PLAY AND CHARGE IS 100% ONLY FOR CHARGING. IT TRANSFERS ABSOLUTELY NO DATA AND HAS BEEN STATED AS SUCH BY MS!!!!!

It does transfer some data, but as I said, I suspect its only enough to identify that theres a p&c kit plugged in, and if its charging or not, else the 360 could not smartly support charging.

Check out Twisted's post.
As of right now, it transfers a LITTLE data to tell the computer that the controller is plugged in, but that's pretty much it.

Thats not true, I use my wireless controller with the play and charge wire without the batteries all the time, it isnt charging anything.

See now where's your faith in M$ guys?? OF COURSE they will release support for the wireless controller on the PC.

This will be done via a $69.99 device (you know, a compatitable antenna that will plug into your PC)... Just give em time..

As far as the charging kit working.. Assuming it DOES send all data, your best place to look would be www.redcl0ud.com's forums, the maker of the XBCD driver. Him and/or another fella have released 360 drivers.. Not sure if they include wireless support, but someone there could assuredly tell you what to change in the .ini file. Reason it's not working is because all USB devices have unique ID's relating to their model etc., and wireless has a different ID number than the wired version. You could also look up a USBView program to get that number yourself, again that site is great for learning how to do such things.. HtH

Rooster

If it was only for charging, wouldn't they just call it the "Charge Kit"? The instructions I got with my kit make the distinction that when the controller is plugged in via the play and charge kit, it is not functioning wirelessly.

guys, there is very ver very little data send over the plug and charge kit. the controller is still in wireless mode. if you were to take the RF module off your xbox, and then plug in the controller, you would be able to turn the system on with the guide button, but it will do NOTHING else. no button on the controller will work. the data that is sent via the plug and charge kit i believe is battery state (for auto shutoff) and to switch the system on... nothing else.

which means, the only way to use the wireless controller with a pc is if they make a RF receiver for the computer.

to me it really doesn't make sense why they didn't do this. would have been a real simple thing to do to swap the controller from wireless mode to nonwireless mode, then it would have worked. i don't see why future controllers wouldn't do this and was a missight by MS knowing that more full systems would be sold over the core and more people would want the wireless over the wired. myself personally, I would like to have this option for the very selfdome time I play a pc game, but to me I prefer the wireless controller more, and it's not worth me going and buying a wired controller just for this, I'll still spend the extra $10 to get the wireless.

Well I have MS Vista and it recognizes it fine,

But can you use it to play games? Because I have that same thing, but I can't use it on Vista games such as Halo2Vista or games that I make in XNA...

You could just do the normal thing that most people have done and get the reciver http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox3...gamingreceiver/
Its not that hard to do and its cheap (well in the UK it is not sure about every where else) Oh and just so you know its called a "Play and Charge" kit cos you can keep playing while it charges the the power pack end of story it will not at all no matter how hard you want it to PLAY games on a PC!!!!!

Actually, I connect the wireless controller to my xbox 360 and Windows XP- Based PC without any battery at all and I get the full functionality of a wired controller. The people who think it is only for charging are completely out of their minds, the wire wouldn't be nearly as thick as it is. It can be used on any XP- based machine... all you need to do is change a few hexidecimal values in the original drivers from 0 to 1 and it works fine. Come on, seriously.. I'm only 15 and I figured out what everyone here is trying to do. I'll soon be uploading the drivers to my website for download. It will be on a separate post. Check back soon.

And yes.. I am able to play the games... It registers as a gamepad.

Sweet.. Nice thinking outside of the box!... Looking forward to your upload of the working USB driver for the Plug & Charge kit.. B.T.W.. What's your website addy?..

I'de also like those drivers if you have time to finish them or upload them, whats ure website url? Thanks.

any update on the website or the hex fix.. i would do it myself if i knew how

You wont see a post from him on this matter again, because it doesnt work. The Play and Charge kit transfers some data that is relevant to charge state etc, but not controller data. Changing a 0 to a 1 in a driver, doesnt physically rewire hardware....at least the last time I checked it didn't.

i dont know if anybody remembers the thing with the old wireless controllers ( from around launch) and the wireless headset not working together properly? but the thing is that those old controllers would actually work connected to a pc with the play n charge kit, but whatever they changed with the controllers to make them work well with the wireless headset must have also made some changes to whatever communication method it uses with the kit, or they could have just updated the driver software to not recognise the wireless controller to try and make some money from people by forcing them to buy the wireless adapter